Learning to Ride

Eighth Private Lesson

Today's lesson was interesting.

This morning well beforehand Catherine sent me an email to say "I can't remember if I told you I moved the horses again..." and gave me the address for a new facility.  It has been a couple weeks, but still I thought that was a bit sudden.  I had a few things I needed to tell her about, so fair's fair.

The new place is out in Woodinville, just off Highway 522.  It is about 10 minutes closer than the one outside of Duvall, nicer in almost every way, Catherine said it was helping her regain some students who had balked at going so far, and was less expensive.  Plus now she's working with other instructors in an environment she likes.  Things have gone from unhappy for her to good and I'm really glad, she deserves it.

It will take a while to get used to the new place, the horses don't have the room they did at the previous and are apparently not too happy about that, but Cypress is with his bossy girlfriend and seems quite content with that.

Probably mostly the change of venue and the newness of everything, but he was particularly bad today.  On the plus side I was a lot better about getting control and not letting him get away with it. A lot of work on subtle control, particularly since I had my kidney stone ultrasound surgery on Tuesday we spent most of the lesson working on improving my position in the saddle and using the reins only for correcting him rather than signaling him (mostly).  Got up to a trot briefly but he got big ideas in his head immediately and it took some work to get him back under control.

Catherine was extremely complimentary on how I did.  After I thought about it I could see what she meant, but while I was in the middle of it I was too busy trying to deal with his buttheadedness to notice that I was having a lot easier time with that, and he was responding very well to most of what I was doing.

She mentioned two things we're going to do soon, one is working on using the reins one handed, and the other was canter.  I'm really looking forward to it, going to have to schedule the next lessons for soon, I don't want to wait another couple weeks again.

Seventh Private Lesson

This one was meant to be a semi-private, but skye wasn't feeling up to riding and I was (it nearly seemed like it might go the other way since I've have a cold recently), so I headed out.

I got there about 10 minutes early and found and said hello to Cypress.  He was acting a little strange, I gave him his cookie and he started investigating me for further treats (that's not the strange part), then he was bucking his head around and withdrawing from my scratches, it was a sign of what was to come.

Met the owner of the property, he seemed quite nice and helpful, pointed me to enough grooming gear that I took Cypress out of his stall, into the cross-tie, and started working on him until Catherine showed up.  Cypress was shaking his head around and moving side to side a lot, had to look out for his hooves more than usual.  Catherine thought he might be excited because other horses were getting their hay, I'm not sure.

I took him out to the arena and tried to get on him with the mounting stool, but the butthead really enjoys swinging his backside around just as you place the stool in the right spot.  Once Catherine joined me we got that out of the way and started working on the western trot again.  He was being thick but I got him to do mostly what I asked, keeping the right pace for the trot was very difficult though.  The other big thing I worked on was not letting him slow down to a walk at the turns, which he tends to do.

I started working on taking the reins in one hand, grabbing the end of one with my now free hand and whacking at his flank with it to get him moving.  Much easier to do than carrying a crop, and I have a feeling I'll get a lot of practice with Cypress with that maneuver.  Butthead.

Near the end of the lesson we worked on... I'm going to screw up the term for this I know it... giving with the leg?  No that's not it.  Anyway it is basically moving forward and getting the horse to move sideways by crossing his rear foot.  There's pressure on both sides at the same time to keep moving forward while going sideways, and very fidgety.  Too much and the horse, too little and nothing happens.

Catherine got on him to demonstrate since the first time I tried it I didn't provide any pressure on the side he was moving to, so he just turned.  Naturally.  She made the analogy of moving a pingpong ball by applying pressure on both sides but a little bit more on one, and that clicked for me.

I got onto him without the stool for the first time then, and despite it being a little difficult due to the lack of flexibility in my legs it was still easier than getting him lined up for the stool, so I may just stop using it from now on.

Once I was on him I gave it another try and it went great.  Catherine seemed very pleased and maybe a little surprised that I got it working that well on my first attempt.  When we tried the other direction it didn't quite go so smoothly but it was still pretty good.  It is tricky for sure but Cypress made me look good.

Lesson Nine

Wow what a wonderful lesson!

We went to the new facility for the first time today, it is out a little past Duvall, WA on the Duvall-Monroe Road.  It is very different, tucked up against the hill in a beautiful valley, with the 150 acres of land hugging that hill and extending a little out into the valley itself.

I graduated to using a western bridle this lesson, and wow what a difference.  Cypress was the easiest he's ever been for me, very responsive not just from the reins but also less pressure and to shifts in weight.  In fact a few times when I was trying to get into a better position in the saddle he said "Oh!  You want to GOOOOO"

I gave him one of your cookies at the beginning of the lesson and he loved it.  He kept searching me for more, and when I held out the same hand I fed him with earlier so he could sniff it and see there was no cookie, he started eating my hand.  It was a little surreal to have a horse munching on my hand, it didn't hurt, he didn't apply real pressure, but I felt his teeth.  I was very amused.

Lots of work on steering and western trot, which I got into very well today and it was great.  Also worked on turning on the rear hooves.  That was harder, I had some success but it will take more work.  Turning on the fore went okay.  Also worked on sharpening turns by leaning back and to the opposite side of the turn, which went well.

I gave him another cookie at the end, and told him they were from you.

Postponing Lesson Nine

I'm so glad I got all the extra lessons in before my visit which coincided with Catherine moving from one facility to another.  I sent her email last night asking if she was going to be ready for us on Friday (had a feeling she might not), and sure enough she has one horse who won't get on the trailer, the tack is a mess, and she'd like to give the horses a chance to get used to the new environment before putting them back to work with lessons.

So we'll wait for her to be ready and then I'll figure out how many private lessons I want between the semi-privates with skye.